House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 48% of the vote.
National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act November 6th, 2023
Madam Speaker, we are talking about the Investment Canada Act. We are not talking about the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement.
I will say this, to complete my thoughts. The Investment Canada Act is there to protect Canadians against investments that are not in Canada's national interests. This act would be a small step forward—
National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act November 6th, 2023
Madam Speaker, this is a great opportunity to talk about foreign direct investment in Canada, why it is important and why this legislation is before us.
Our viewers might ask why foreign investment is so important to Canada. There are many reasons that we should be looking to attract foreign investment into our country. Foreign investment provides Canada with the capital it needs to develop its full potential and, yes, that includes our abundant natural resources, such as oil and gas. Foreign investment in Canada is also a source of innovation, allowing Canada to benefit from evolving technologies. As one of the most educated countries in the world, we also use that foreign investment in innovation to build our own technological capacity.
Intellectual property will drive our future prosperity. We had better ensure that this advantage is not squandered by failing to properly review foreign investments.
It goes without saying that foreign investment creates many jobs across our country. Invariably, when a foreign investor makes its investment in Canada, this creates new job opportunities for Canadians. Related to that is the fact that jobs created by foreign investment generate higher wages. At a time when the worst affordability crisis of a generation is raging, when many families are struggling to make ends meet and pay for groceries, schooling, gas and rent, it is important that the jobs that Canadians have available to them also have decent paycheques attached. Foreign direct investment also drives increased productivity, leading to greater prosperity for our country. When foreign investors commit to building our economy, they also increase our tax base, which of course allows governments at all levels to deliver the services that Canadians expect.
Unfortunately, for quite a number of years now, especially since the current Liberal government came to power, Canada's foreign direct investment performance has lagged far behind that of many of its OECD competitors. What I mean by this is that there is more investment flowing out of Canada and being invested in foreign jurisdictions than there is foreign investment flowing into Canada. We actually have a very significant deficit. Why has this happened?
There are many reasons. I will not go into them all, but I will begin with this: Canada is suffering from regulatory gridlock. In other words, regulatory and approval processes at all levels of government are so complex and reflect such an overreach that nobody wants to invest in Canada anymore. We have labour force challenges, heightened uncertainty, deteriorating public finances and increasingly unmanageable debt loads.
By the way, our system is not tax competitive. For years, we have been talking about tax reform, yet over the last eight years, no reform has materialized under the current Liberal government. As a result, it has become too expensive to do business in Canada.
Most recently, the Liberal government decided that not only would it maintain a punishing carbon tax on everything, but it would also quadruple the carbon tax on the necessities of life, the things that Canadians need to survive, such as home heating, natural gas and groceries. Prices have skyrocketed as the Prime Minister ratchets up his carbon tax. Putting gas in the car is becoming prohibitively expensive for many families. He plans to quadruple the carbon tax on fuel for our cars as well.
To make matters worse, while the Prime Minister recently announced that he would temporarily suspend the carbon tax on home heating oil for 3% of Canadians, the remaining 97% of Canadians will receive absolutely no break from the carbon tax on their own home heating costs. I thought he once said, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”. It is another vacuous promise from a failed Prime Minister who seeks to divide Canadians and pit them against one another.
The bottom line is this: The world no longer sees Canada as a great place to invest. It is the government's policies, grounded in an ideology that disregards the importance of making Canada a welcome place for foreigners to invest, that is the basis of these problems. We have to get foreign direct investment into Canada right, because it can raise our standard of living and give Canadians, especially young Canadians, the hope that they can live out the Canadian dream.
However, not all investments are necessarily in Canada's best interests. There are benevolent investments that benefit Canada's economy, and then there are investments that are being made by malevolent actors around the world who simply want to take advantage of Canada. As we consider which investments fall into each of these two categories, it is absolutely critical that we make the determination that we are going to focus on Canada's net benefit, on defending our sovereignty and protecting our national security. That is why we are discussing this legislation today.
Bill C-34 simply attempts to update the Investment Canada Act, an act that is quite a number of years old now, but it has not kept up with the changing conditions on the ground, in a rapidly evolving global environment. I would mention that, after eight years, the government has been unable to put in place the kinds of policies and regulations that would actually protect Canadians against their key industries and companies being bought out.
I will give an example. Hytera and its associated company Sinclair Technologies have been charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States. In fact, President Biden has banned the company from doing business in the U.S. However, in 2017, the Liberal industry minister, Navdeep Bains, refused to conduct a full national security review on the sale of a B.C.-based telecoms company, Norsat International to China-based Hytera, which is banned from doing business in the United States. It was here in Canada buying up one of our companies.
The RCMP awarded a contract to Hytera to supply sensitive hardware for its communications systems. The Canada Border Services Agency has also been using communications technology from Hytera. Members may recall that a few years ago, the industry minister set up some rules about making sure that key Canadian companies, especially within the critical minerals space, would not be bought up by foreign hostile actors, yet that is exactly what happened.
In 2022, the Liberal government fast-tracked the takeover of Canadian lithium mining company Neo Lithium by Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining without a national security review. Every single citizen in China, every single company, whether a state-owned enterprise or otherwise, has a responsibility to report to the government any information it asks for with respect to the business that they carry on.
We want to make sure that this bill does what it is supposed to do. Briefly, this bill would streamline the minister's ability to investigate national security reviews of these foreign investments. It would strengthen penalties for failure to comply with the Investment Canada Act's review provisions. It would create a new power to generate a list of sensitive industries. It would improve coordination with our international partners. It would also vest power to the minister, rather than allowing cabinet to make these kinds of decisions in the first instance.
Would it not be better, instead of having two eyes on this kind of transaction, to have all the eyes of cabinet focusing on whether an investment is in Canada's net benefit or whether it represents a risk to our national security? The bottom line is we tried to get some amendments. To their credit, some members of the committee agreed with us and we actually got four critical amendments passed. However, there were seven other amendments we tried to make, some of which were contained in a unanimous report from the industry committee, and guess what? The Liberals on the committee voted them down.
We can do better, but this is a start.
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed my colleague's speech.
She was critical of the FIPA, the investment treaty, that Canada signed with China, but the 1994 FIPA, or investment treaty, with Ukraine and this new modernized free trade agreement with Ukraine both contain similar provisions.
I am wondering if she is going to be encouraging her colleagues in the NDP to strip the Ukraine trade agreement of these provisions or if she is supportive of including those kinds of investment protections in this new free trade agreement with Ukraine.
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to go into the revisionist history that my colleague recited here in this House. He should know that as the minister who was responsible for negotiating the original Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, I would be supportive of any reasonable steps we can take to improve our economic relationship with Ukraine and help it up on its feet.
My question for the member has to do with liquefied natural gas. As he knows, Ukraine has an energy security problem because it can no longer get natural gas from Russia. The obvious place for Ukraine to turn to is Canada, and yet our Prime Minister has said that there is no business case to be made for exporting LNG. Does my colleague actually support the moral case for Canada exporting its LNG to Ukraine to help Ukraine with its energy security challenge?
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Mr. Speaker, I very much enjoyed my colleague's speech. Like him, I am a Mennonite with family that immigrated from Ukraine. There are many within our Conservative caucus who have Ukrainian roots and take great interest not only in the terrible situation Ukraine finds itself in right now, with the war and invasion by Russia, but also in the many Ukrainians who have been displaced, found their way to Canada and are here as refugees.
Could the member comment a bit on the Ukrainians who are settling in his area of Canada? How are they being received, and how are they doing right now?
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's speech. However, it did concern me that he was somewhat disparaging toward our oil and gas industry. The member accused some in this House of scoring cheap political points, but when one does that, one had better not be guilty of doing the very same thing; unfortunately, he is the guilty one here.
Natural gas is one of the solutions to the world's greenhouse gas emissions challenges. We can displace dirty coal elsewhere around the world by exporting much cleaner natural gas to those countries. There is some urgency in doing this for Ukraine. Does the member not believe that Canada should put in place every single strategy available to us in order to get our liquefied natural gas to a country like Ukraine, which is in such deep straits and turmoil because of Russia's invasion? Does he not agree that this is an urgent situation where we should be providing—
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Madam Speaker, the member spent a lot of time talking about investor protections, and she suggested that foreign investment protection promotion agreements are corrosive to democracy and to how we represent Canada's sovereignty at home and abroad. However, I would ask her a question. There has been an investor protection agreement in place with Ukraine since 1994, for 30 years. Can she point out one or two cases under those provisions that have resulted in Canada's sovereignty's being impaired?
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments about the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. He mentioned that MCC is very active in Abbotsford in helping refugees from Ukraine settle in our beautiful community. I would invite him to expand on that.
Where have they settled? How are they integrating into our community?
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Mr. Speaker, I just following up on the previous question from my NDP colleague, who has suggested time and time again that Canada has a free trade agreement with China. That is patently false, and I think he knows that. What he is actually referring to is a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, or FIPA.
I would ask the member, who just gave a very good speech on Ukraine, if it is her understanding that Canada has gone so far as to sign a trade agreement with China and why it is that Ukraine is the priority right now when it comes to negotiating free trade.
Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023 October 24th, 2023
Mr. Speaker, one of the major challenges facing Ukraine is energy security. Ukraine formerly depended on Russia for its natural gas supplies, and of course that opportunity has quickly evaporated.
Canada stands in a perfect position to sell natural gas to Ukraine. Unfortunately, our current government has been very reluctant to promote the sale of liquefied natural gas to the rest of the world, claiming that there is no business case to be made for it. However, now we have an opportunity within the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement to perhaps find a way of getting our natural gas to Ukraine and providing them with energy security. What component of this agreement, if any, would expedite and assist Canadian companies to export liquefied natural gas to Ukraine?